


invisible scars don't heal,

by nanchatte



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crocker tier!Jane, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, PTSD, Retcon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 10:36:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3171662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nanchatte/pseuds/nanchatte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's easy to fix the game. Fixing themselves is not so simple.</p>
            </blockquote>





	invisible scars don't heal,

**Author's Note:**

> i am like the biggest jake/jane shipper ever yet i feel like this fic kinda embodies exactly why they wouldn't really work out?? anyways yeah, i tagged some triggery stuff just in case!!

Roxy and Dirk are elsewhere; it's just him and Jane, erupted from the stardust and the space-clouds and sporting a pair of bizarrely comfortable pajamas, despite his short orange briefs leaving little to the imagination. He catches Jane staring in horror, doesn't bother to pretend he hasn't noticed and he laughs and laughs and laughs and Jane laughs too and when they embrace each other it's with the unsaid cry of victory: _we did it, we did it_.

They fly-- real, honest to betsy _flying_!-- to Jane's planet, where the sky is charcoal grey and illuminated balloons float like multicoloured moonlight above them. Jane's house is in tip-top shape, complete with all the doohickeys from the game, and golly if that doesn't seem like a lifetime ago.

It hits Jake then and there, that something is not right; an especially harrowing sense of deja-vu which shoots as ice through his veins and seeps out a cold sweat. His heartbeat's like a trapped bird in a cage, and he thinks that if he says something, if he tries to vocalize his feelings, it might fly out of his mouth and away into the night sky. Jane, observant as usual, asks, "What's wrong, Jake?"

Her voice is the slam of prison bars and he chokes out his reply in Jane's bathroom, head hanging over the toilet bowl and spitting bile on the porcelain.

\---

They have made what Jane refers to as an _executive decision_ and do not look for their friends. Dirk, Jane assured him, is probably making the first move himself with Roxy in tow, and will reach the Land of Crypts and Helium in no time, sword and sunglasses and harbringer of a belated reality check, for the two have silently made it clear to each other that they will not discuss things that have already transpired, things that might threaten the sandpapering of their rugged friendship.

They sit in Jane's kitchen, under the tungsten light with the fridge door open, illuminating their midnight snack of ham and cheese sandwiches. The place is dusty but otherwise immaculate, and Jake thinks it smells like chemicals and television adverts and flour and nothing at all like the earth and the jungle.

Something nags at the back of his mind, the void in his head that is empty and hollow and letting air in. Knowing that Jane has a good head on her shoulders, he says, "Say, Jane, don't you think something is well... mighty barmy, about all this?"

She looks away, boasting a tinge of red on her cheeks, and starts to busy herself with buttering her sandwich. When the bread is saturated with margerine she admits, finally, "Oh, Jake, I thought we'd be over our fights. That we'd just be friends again."

"You mean you remember?"

"Of course I do!"

Jake is breathless with exhileration. He leans in close and doesn't miss the way Jane jolts, like a regular flibbertigibbet at his sudden proximity. He thinks, a little egotistically, that she's not over their fights at all. "I don't remember a bloody thing," he reveals, a smidgen apologetic. "Not anything after us on our quest beds, anyway."

There is a profound, sobering silence in which Jake truly understands what he's just said; his head spins and on Jane's forehead appears a thoughtful crease as she examines him, all problem-solving and shrewd and _Jane_. "Well," she replies slowly, and he squirms. "That's because there wasn't anything else after that. We just came here, didn't we?"

Jake takes a bite of his sandwich and lets out a frustrated _hmm_ at her rhetorical, almost patronizing question. He continues to eat in silence, and tries to catch the fleeting thoughts of why he suddenly thinks Jane looks so pretty, in brown and green; these earthy colours so far away from red.

\---

Are gods supposed to dream? Unless these aren't dreams but dastardly, unnerving snapshots from a projection of a life that never belonged to him. Purple walls-- Derse? But no, if he would dream despite his sleep-self murder, surely he would dream of his own domain; golden towers and blue, blue skies, a prince in paradise.

Jake feels trapped, and afraid, and cowardly and that in itself is almost more fearsome than the nightmare as a whole. Gods aren't supposed to be powerless, are they? Especially not a god, Jake English, who has battled monsters and scoured tombs, who spits in the face of danger and flips the bird at the old monotony of trepidation. He is the spirit of adventure, and oh _by jove_ does he want to go home when she appears, like a crimson wraith, and curses away his freedom with one overly familiar hand on his trembling shoulder.

When he wakes up, Jake smells grown man, shaving foam, tobacco. His sleep-heavy mind wavers between restraint and mindless indulgence and something within him cracks like pottery and wildness trickles in between the broken edges; he flips the dresser, rips freshly-pressed shirts and blazers until they lie strewn like pelts across the immaculate carpet and he screams amidst it all, "I want to go home! I want to go _home_!"

Someone holds him back, tiny hands and fingers scrabbling at his daft custard cape. She wraps herself around him, presses her cheek between his shoulder blades and says, simply, "It's okay, Jake."

Jake wriggles out of her grasp, sits on the edge of the bed and catches his breath. Jane scrutinises his handiwork, the mess he has made of her father's suave and sharp legacy and he feels a sudden anger; it's only okay, he realises, because she is at ease amongst this unorganic, synthicated domesticity. She sits down next to him, and the quiescent silence they share together sends shivers down Jake's spine.

Obey, submit, consume. Jake closes his eyes and imagines an enormous manor made of scarlet, red-dressed children (so blasted _many_ of them) standing in a uniform line, a vast industrial kitchen spewing out process, after process, after process. Sex in a bedroom the colour of blood; obligatory, plastic, carefully designed and packaged lust, and heartbeats, and intimacy.

Jake forces a grin and says, "But shucks buster, Jane, we need to win this game."

Jane's lip quirks a smile too. "Shucks buster, do I know."

\---

It has been four days since the two of them rose from the ashes like phoenixes into colourful pajamas, and made their way to LOCAH, excited, nervous but more importantly, _ready_. But as with the rest of their session, they now play a tiring waiting game; there has been no word from Dirk or Roxy and Jane paces her house impatiently, muttering and thinking and tutting while Jake watches stupid sitcoms on Jane's television, concentrating hard. It's difficult to feel truly involved in the lives of these strange, dapper men without explosions or jungle-treks or honourable fisticuffs atop moving trains.

Jake yawns, and takes a sleepy shower. Godtier is a queer, unexplainable thing and while Jake doubts he truly gets peckish, or drowsy, or dirty, he still enjoys the whole routine of it, and there's nothing much else for a restless fellow to do at Jane's humble abide but to conform to uncomfortable, suburban reality. There is something pleasant about hot water that puts his mind at ease, and when he exits to find that Jane has hidden away his towel for a bit of the old prankster gambit, he sits down on the bathroom floor and stares up at the clean white ceiling. He can almost pretend it is the same colour and texture of the beasts back on the island, lurking in the dense thicket, _hungry_.

Those monsters don't seem quite so gnarly, not any more. The real monsters, Jake thinks, are elsewhere.

\---

Jane has dark circles that drag at her blue eyes, wilt her spirit. Jake assumes she slept badly, so while he pours his fourth bowl of cereal he does not suggest a quick romp out in the terrain, or a nosey about the caves and crypts for hidden treasures and long-lost bitsybobs. He remains silent as Jane mutters a quick good morning and, uncharacteristically, begins to swig milk straight from the carton. He bites his lip. Does Jane dream like he does? Of things hidden away in the back of her brain, things that have happened but _not_ happened, things that chew at her nerves, break her down, make her question the legitimacy of this waiting. Make her think that this, this present whirligig, is simply a fake thing of no real substance, an aimless purgatory?

"I think I killed an alien," Jane says so suddenly that Jake nearly spits out his cornflakes.

"You what?!"

"An alien," Jane repeats, head in her hands. "Then I brought him back to life again."

Jake eyes the symbol on Jane's breast; the green squiggles that he suspects is her aspect, just as those shimmery wings are his own. Maybe it is not only in dream-world, that Jane has her fingers brushing resurrection, pulling the puppet-strings of living creatures, alien or otherwise. He takes a deep breath and it rattles his lungs in fear. "Jane, do you, say... for instance, ever dream about me?"

She starts, gives him a strange expression framed by a raised eyebrow, a soft blush passing over her cheekbones so briefly he might have missed it. Jake immediately feels the beginnings of mortification, the tips of his ears hot and burning and he splutters, "I, I was just wondering, is all! It seems like a mighty impertenent question though, when I think about it!"

Jane laughs lightly-- that familiar _hoohoohoo_ and his veins tingle in a nostalgic warmth and he forgets, momentarily, that she is responsible for a deep, unsolved ache in his core, a sword-sharp pain in his heart. She shakes her head, looks up at him from beneath thick, innocent lashes and giggles, "What, am I in _your_ dreams, Mr. English?"

Jake swallows hard, his gut clenching. Not dreams. Nightmares.

"N-no! Not at all." He lies.

\---

The reflection in the mirror is nearly a stranger, Jake decides, but no matter how straight his tie or how glimmering his shoes, there is a ferociousness that lurks behind his sun-bronzed skin and peeks out like his front teeth, a slither of the untamed jungle that cannot be weeded. Jane runs her hand over the crease in her father's blazer, over his elbow, and sighs, long and hard.

She is the girl heir of a business empire, and he is a boy to whom empresses make no difference; for he comes from a place of no rules and no heirarchy, where suits are stifling, humid, dangerous. A white beast doesn't care if his prey is earning a high salary in two hundred dollar trousers, after all.

Jake fidgets uncomfortably. "To be honest with you, Janey," he says at last, "I think those twee little orange short-shorts were a far sight better than this stuffy haberdasher."

Jane throws herself down on her father's bed, spread-eagled and defeated, a palm over her face. She groans loudly. "You know what, Jake, I think you're right."

He does not turn away from his reflection, however, engrossed in the image of adulthood he is trying so hard to achieve in too-big clothes, his gangly adolescence prominently sticking out this way and that through grey and black and white. He fiddles with the knot in his tie, loosens it so that it might feel less like a collar, and in the mirror he can see Jane lounging, her eyes fixed on his form and his heartbeat stutters, falters when she brushes back her black curls absently, and he remembers a red crown, back from when she was queen of the world.

\---

His grandmother is a wolf-- fanged smiles, nails like claws that will rake open his throat and he bleeds the brand colour, so he doubts anyone will object to his suffering if he fails to obey.

In his dream-that-is-not-a-dream, Jake wonders who will save him; who he has left to save him. When he thinks there is no hope left (has he ever, for once in his life, really hoped for or believed in anything, truly?) he rattles his fists on dirty plum walls and Dirk, phantom-like, floats behind him and observes tight-lipped and disappointed, arms crossed over his broad chest. "Dirk," he pleads. "Dirk, bro, please help me."

The ghost flickers and vanishes, and Jake is left alone.

"By golly, they sure are taking their time," he complains later, pacing the kitchen like a trapped animal while Jane mixes cake batter a little more forcefully than usual. "Maybe we ought to buckle up and give looking for them a whirl, what do you say, Janey?"

"They'll be here," she snaps, and Jake stops pacing, flinches, heart racing. Obey, obey, obey. "I believe in Dirk."

"Me too," Jake replies, in a small voice, but he wonders just how true that is.

\---

She brings a packed lunch with her, when after a few more days they leave the house and stand, a wee bit warily, amongst the dead spindle-branches of crooked white trees and the distant, clumsy ambling of skeletons. The Land of Crypts and Helium creaks like an old thing and smells like decay and balloon-rubber.

Jane floats, the toes of her little fabric boots just brushing the dusty surface of the weathered pathway, and she tosses Jake one of her most genuine, apologetic smiles. "I'll be back soon," she says, almost babying in tone and Jake has to fight for moisture in his mouth. "Sorry, Jake."

He watches her dive into the sky, until she melds into the darkness completely. He remains for a little while longer before making his way back to the driveway of Jane's house, surly and silent, and suddenly without Jane's company he feels icy-cold and terribly lonely. Station manned, he sits on the living room's squashy sofa and waits for Jane to return with news of their friends, twiddling his thumbs, jaw set.

He wants to explore this unknown, desolate land, but Jane's orders sit firm and red in his mind: don't leave the house, Jake. What if they come, and no one's here? Don't wander off on your own, Jake, because the Land of Crypts and Helium is no jungle; it's a foreboding, desperate place and a denizen sleeps under it, enormous and powerful-- more powerful even, than a newborn god.

Jake wonders since when his thoughts had colour. He barely registers when he stands, and his feet bring him of their own accord up the stairs and down the corridor-- past Jane's father's room, where he usually resides-- and into her own bedroom, soft and quaint and so obviously _her_ , all these quirky posters haphazardly stuck on each and every wall and detective novels lining the bookshelves and... there!-- a blaringly scarlet chest, emblazoned with Crocker Corp's three-pronged fork. Goosepimples rise on arms and legs and he kneels before it, undoes the clasp and looks inside.

He feels guilty; loitering about a lady's quarters like a no-good ruffian, but he's enchanted, fixated on all this Betty Crocker merchandise that lies unused and neglected within the chest. He rummages inside, pulls out bits and bobs, and it feels dirty, like's he's stuck his forearm in mud and gunk and terror and control, and he comes out somewhat empty-handed, breathing hard.

Betty Crocker calculator, Betty Crocker stopwatch, Betty Crocker Recipe Book for Industrious Girls, Betty Crocker DVD manual, Betty Crocker Post-It Notes and there's something written on one of those, a near-illegible chickenscratch that can't be Jane's; Jane's handwriting is neat and methodical, and this scrawl looks like seaweed tangles and the gouges on the hulls of sunken ghostships. Jake doesn't read it. He closes the chest and sits alone and frustrated among the enemy's toys and trinkets, just another used-up piece of objectified Crocker Corp shit.

\---

"Jake," Jane asks out of the blue, over a freshly-baked mushroom casserole. "Did you go into my room?"

Dangnabbit, he should have seen this coming; Jane's a self-proclaimed detective and Jake supposes he did a right poor job trying to make it seem as though he wasn't going through her batterwitch things like a snooper. Still, he does not tell the truth. "No," he replies, a bit too defensively.

Jane is quiet for a small while, but she looks at him in a mixture of disappointment and deduction, as though she is taking him a part and putting him back together; a human jigsaw puzzle. Then, she scowls.

"You're not the only one in pain, you know," she mutters, under her breath, and Jake hears her words as _think about someone other than yourself_ and he reaches out a hand to grab her own but she's pranced away, red-faced and eyes turned downwards and all he can do is watch her storm out of the kitchen, angry and fed-up and very, very small.

Jake thinks, but horsefeathers, he would have made a terrible husband.

\---

White light. A beautiful girl-- not Jane, for Jane is beautiful the way the colour red is; sharp and boisterous and simple. This girl is deep, unmistakeable blue. Jake tries to keep a hold on what he sees, in this strange god-sleep of his, but his brain crumbles away like paper in flames, all wrinkled and charred and ash. He thinks he hears Dirk's voice, like a distant murmur, but when he wakes up it's just plain whitewashed walls and tie-racks and the smell of Jane frying eggs and bacon in the kitchen below.

They eat breakfast in silence, and Jake struggles to articulate an apology before giving up, mindlessly spooning rashers into his mouth as he watches Jane cut up her food, bring morsels to her lips on a silver fork, four-prongs and deadly and embedded deep within his belly. He bleeds like a cascade and it pours down his yellow front painlessly, dripping and dripping as he falls--

Jane growls, "Jake, you're staring at me," and it's enough to jar him back to reality.

Bacon suspended mid-chomp, jaw hanging open, Jake figures he must be the most unsightly picture to ever be, and that's to be said in a house where Michael Cera hangs willy-nilly on the hallway wall. He hastily finishes his plate, mops up egg yolk with a slice of bread and retreats to the shower, where he drowns his daft imaginings of his untimely demise in hot water and soap and a grown-up's shaving foam.

"That wasn't a heroic or just death at all," he says to himself, amidst the spray, and he can't help but be slightly disappointed to find his towel still hanging on the bar when he exits, as if Jane's light-hearted jackanapes no longer applies to those who are already fools.

\---

Jake proposes they watch a movie together and they spend a good hour debating the finer points of the genre spectrum before Jane sits, trying pettily to hide her interest, her face illuminated by cinematic gunshots and eruptions and screams while he whoops and yells, all buck-toothed grinning and fluff for brains.

"Hey, Jake," Jane drawls, and Jake turns to her, a little bit hasty. Her lip quirks upwards and she grabs his jaw before he can run away, before he can beg her to return to normal, to doe-blue eyes and fake moustaches and quiet, nonvocalised affection. "Shut up! I'm trying to watch the movie!"

She laughs lightly when his teeth stick together, but side-eyes him with periwrinkle concern when he does not make a noise for the remaining ninety minutes.

\---

The island is his, but different. All ripped up and destroyed; the volcano spewing endless amounts of molten lava into the sea of red below. It bubbles and spits, a cauldron of fire, and there's too much going on for Jake to take it in. He doesn't even know if he _can_ comprehend, his brain all muddled with sleep and terror and a strange tingling in his bones like he's suddenly made of light and stardust and things that float and sparkle.

Jane sleeps the way he always thought she would-- face all thoughtful, as if she dreams of deductions and mysteries waiting to be solved, and not of threats, and slavery, and her friends in terror. She is still bright red, but Jake wants to go to her. Run his fingers through her hair and tell her, "Jane, this balderdash doesn't suit you," and "Jane, I promise I'll never ever disappoint you again."

He wants to keep his word. Dirk's sword lies thick and sharp and gruesome through his chest because of it, after all.

Can gods die? Only a heroic death, or a just one. And in that moment, for him, Jake thinks it might be both.

\---

Jake wakes up in the kind of pain one feels after just running a marathon, all achey and hammery-hearted. The dream, like most, slips through his fingers like rainwater, and he grapples with the puddle of it: death, and love, and blood, and sacrifice. Where did all that hokum go, really? To the strange distances of alternate universes, that Dirk had told him about what feels like moons ago, shoulder-by-shoulder, fingers intwined? Or the land where his ancestors had hailed from, where his grandmother is dog-eared, a girl, his age but bright and hopeful? Jake presses his knuckles to his eyes and watches the lights dance behind his eyelids.

He can't quite describe it; the certain sense of peace he feels now that he's awake. Outside the window, the Land of Crypts and Helium seeps dark and dank through Jane's father's bedroom, illuminating the man's belongings in soft balloon-light. Jake puts on his glasses, turns on the bedside lamp and stumbles out to peer over the balcony to Jane's living room. She's not there; the smell of cooked breakfast doesn't even linger in the air. He looks at the clock, quarter past ten, and frowns. Time doesn't really matter here, in the blasted game, but Jane sure does like routine.

He finds her in her room, sitting on the edge of her bed, cheeks wet and nose red. There's something in her lap, and Jake's bones turn to ice when he recognizes it-- the crimson tiara from his dreams. Jane sniffs loudly.

"I thought I threw it away," she says, desperately. "I thought I'd thrown it _away_."

Jake has never seen Jane cry-- he had always imagined her too hard despite her soft edges, too independent despite her shelteredness for such things. But all girls cry, and all upstanding gentlemen must do what is within their power to help a damsel out; only, was it not him, sobbing and snivelling once before? Why hadn't she knelt down beside him then, her forehead pressed against his, the scrape of their spectacles, her fingertips to catch the tears from the corner of his eyes?

"It was just a dream," he tries to soothe, hands over hers. "It didn't really happen." The tiara thrums beneath them, and outside there's a furious pounding, a rattle of doors, Dirk and Roxy's voices calling their names. Jake watches Jane close her eyes, blue as the sky back on Earth.

"I know," she says.


End file.
